Governance

Coordinated by Sciences Po, the DIME-SHS Excellence Facility was headed by Nicolas Sauger, who has been its Scientific and Technical Director from September 2017 to December 2020. He succeeded Laurent Lesnard, who initiated the project in 2011.

The governance of DIME-SHS was set out in the consortium agreement for the implementation of the excellence facility project; it was structured around three entities.

The Coordinating Committee is responsible for operational oversight of the activities of the three instruments. Its members were: - the Directors of each instrument, - The Technical and IT Director of DIME-SHS, - The Administrative Director, - The Scientific and Technical Director. Its members were permanent guest members of the Steering Committee.

The Steering Committee decided on the strategic and scientific orientations of the project. It was made up of: - A representative of each consortium partner, - The Scientific and Technical Director (Chair of the Steering Committee), - members of the Coordinating Committee.

The Scientific Council was a consultative body tasked with formulating proposals for project’s scientific orientations and adjustments. It was made up of individuals who sit as independent experts with an international reputation in the field of social science methods.

Each of the instruments had its own scientific and technical committee (STC). The role of these committees was to support developments and to discuss scientific and technical choices relating to the instrument. Independent structures, they were made up of experts in qualitative, quantitative or web methods, representing a wide range of social science disciplines.

Team

The EquipEx DIME-SHS instruments were mainly developed and managed by Sciences Po’s CDSP (beQuali and ELIPSS) and medialab (Dime Web) teams.

Within these teams, the technical expertise of specialist engineers was employed in an extremely varied range of disciplines:

• survey methodology,
• questionnaire design and scheduling,
• survey management,
• panel tracking,
• statistical processing,
• survey archiving,
• digital publishing,
• method development,
• adjustment to international standards,
• web application design and development,
• web design,
• IT infrastructure construction and maintenance.

In addition to the diversity of skills needed to run the programmes, there was diversity in the status of personnel, in employers and in the staff funding channels. Since the start of the project at the end of 2011, almost 40 engineers funded by ANR subsidy have contributed to the implementation and management of the instruments, i.e. the equivalent of an average 12 full-time staff per year.

The massive and continuing contribution by permanent CDSP staff – employees of CNRS, FNSP or MESR – also represented an input in human resources that was essential to the success of the project, and in particular for the coordination of DIME-SHS (scientific director, instrument directors, project manager for “infrastructure and IT development”).

In addition to this, contributions further to the PIA subsidy by partners in the DIME-SHS Consortium (EHESS, INED) or other organisations interested in supporting the EquipEx (USPC, INPES, Ministry of Culture, etc.) made it possible to finance months of additional work throughout the project to keep the instruments in operation.